After going to the market again and this time buying a couple of presents – no, I won’t say who they’re for! and exercising our bartering skills, we returned to Villa Weisse to write a few final post cards. We returned to the Village Cafe for our final lunch in Swakop where we both had steak toasties and coke – we have got into a habit of ordering exactly the same thing which waiters always find amusing! We then went to Pandora’s Box for pudding – chocolate brownies, which we both agreed were the best things we’ve eaten in Swakop! After returning to the shop, we were picked up by two guys in a Combi and we headed for the dunes alongside a German Girl, our age, and her father. We arrived at the same place that we went after our first concert and after donning hats (yellow for me and white for Chelcie after I pointed out that a pink one would clash with her purple hoodie!) we started walking up the dune. The walk up the dune is actually quite hard work but you can always stop for a breather while admiring the incredible view. Our instructor was called Daniel and he was 16 and incredibly chatty! We started off by doing two taster runs, to get us started as we were both rather apprehensive, they were only little and you didn’t go very fast. You lay down on a board which was greased on the bottom side and then you lifted up the front and off you went....it was so much fun! I felt like a penguin sliding on ice, just like in Happy Feet, especially when you get to the bottom of the slope and then you just keep on going across the flat sand.
Chelcie didn’t really enjoy the taster runs as they made her feel sick and she bottled out of the first proper run but when I had walked back up to the top again, I managed to black mail her into doing it and luckily for my sake, she really enjoyed it. You got a massive adrenalin rush and you went so fast. Not so fast was the long walk back up to the top of the dune again....actually incredibly hard work! We then did the really big one which apparently we would have gone up to 180 km per hour – I know this sounds totally unbelievable and no I haven’t got my figures wrong, but this dune was pretty long and incredibly steep. I then nearly bottled out as when you looked down you couldn’t actually see the bottom was pretty scary but it was absolutely amazing. The German girl was doing it standing up on something which looked like a snow board – I think you needed a pretty good sense of balance and I’m not sure that I would have managed it! When we were too tired to climb any more sand dunes we had one more turn down to the bottom and then we stood having some much needed coke and nibbles before heading back to town.
Chelcie and I then headed out to get some supper. We were sitting eating when a guy approached us and said that he recognised us from dune boarding. He had recognised us by Chelcie’s shoes which had then been confirmed by my face which we both found pretty funny! He invited us to go for a drink with him later at his father’s club which we accepted. We texted him when we were on our way but when we arrived the club was deserted and we couldn’t hear any music and there were no cars.....so we did a runner! He had already told us that he was on his way so we just texted Pally saying we were going to Kuckis, but, we never expected that he would join us...he did! We had just bought a drink and then he came, he started talking really loudly about how racist the place was and that although he had lived here all his life he had only come in about 3 times before. We both became really uncomfortable as everyone was now staring at us as he was so loud so we suggested we went elsewhere. Both Chelcie and I were now really awkward so we decided to do a runner, we wanted to escape but there was nowhere to run to! Chelcie then said that she was feeling suddenly really ill and didn’t want to go out anymore and we managed to escape back to our hostel felling very uncomfortable!
The next day we headed off for our Desert Tour, we were collected outside our hostel by our tour guide Clio and it was just us on the tour. We spent the morning driving through the desert and stopping to look at plants such as the money bush and the pencil plant. We saw incredible granite mountains with streaks of basalt running through them. We went to one place where there were non-magnetic iron stones and if you struck them with another stone they sounded like a bell. The different sizes created different pitches so we could create a tune with the different stones – it was so bizarre and really good fun. The morning was interesting if a little awkward as there is only so many questions you can ask and we could have done with a couple of more people joining us. We stopped for our picnic lunch under the shadow of a large rock and we got to experience real silence which was absolutely incredible. After lunch we were shown Namibia
The township is where the majority of the black people live and it’s just outside of the main settlement of Swakopmund. There was a huge range of houses from two bedroomed breeze block bungalows to shacks made from rubbish and cardboard. I found it particularly difficult to comprehend how it is still deemed acceptable in this day and age for that large a population to be living in houses made purely from rubbish with no electricity or running water. They had a very clever system for buying water – each house would have a magnet and they would pay x amount of money. You would then go to the tap and plug your magnet in which would turn the water on, when you had enough water you removed the magnet and a certain amount of money would be subtracted from you total depending on how much water you had taken.
It was a good day out and very interesting, however, we both agreed that it wasn’t worth the £83 we paid but it was still worthwhile and I’m glad we went. After having one of my worst nights sleep ever (we had a new dorm mate who was a very obese American peace core worker who sounded like a hippo when snoring which she did all night, I was so close to throwing my alarm clock at her but I thought I might miss and I didn’t want to break it...) we got on the shuttle to Windhoek. The journey went well and I managed to sleep for most of it which was useful. When we arrived, after dumping our bags at the Cardboard Box, we headed straight for the Bank of Windhoek to meet the lady who was sorting out our visas for us. She was a very scary lady who reminded us both of Cruella d’ Vill! There was no development in our situation but she told us that she would have an answer one way or the other tomorrow, she also made it pretty clear to us that we weren’t her priority! We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling in the Box.
In the evening we ventured out to the bar and started playing cards, we were quickly joined by a group of guys, all in their 20s, who were all really good fun. After being there a while we went to Joe’s for drinks before heading to Zanzibar
The next day was a very emotional day for both of us....after returning to the Bank of Windhoek we were informed that we weren’t getting visas and that we were lucky not to be chucked out of Namibia Cape Town Cape Town Namibia
We had two American Peace Core workers from Malawi
The next morning we headed back to Otjikondo to spend Christmas.....
Lots of love Ottilie xxx
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